No remedy

Every election year, politicians try to get people to vote for them.  In doing so, they point out the problems of society and promise change if they’re elected.  Very rarely do they ever deliver.

I wonder how people would respond if a politician ever shouted out, “I have no remedy!  I have no answers for your problems.  Don’t vote for me!  And don’t vote for anyone else either, because they don’t have any remedies either.”

Could a person like that ever be elected?  If nothing else, he’d be the most honest of the bunch.  Then again, it’s kind of hard to vote for a person that declares his incompetence so openly.

But that was the situation that God was bringing about in Judah and Israel.

We will see how quickly things went down in Israel in the book of Kings, but in this passage, God is talking to the people of Judah.

He told them that because they’d turned their backs on him, he was going to strip them not only of all their supplies of food and water, but of all the people they had been counting on to lead and advise them.

In their place, he would leave youths that would have no answers to their problems.

He said the day would come when,

A man will seize one of his brothers at his father’s home, and say, “You have a cloak, you be our leader; take charge of this heap of ruins!”

But in that day he will cry out, “I have no remedy.  I have no food or clothing in my house; do not make me the leader of the people.” (Isaiah 3:6-7)

In other words, people would be so desperate, they would choose anyone to be their leader who seemed to be even a little better off than the rest of the people.

But that person would say, “I have no answers to your problems.  I can’t even take care of my own family.  How can I lead an entire people?”

Where are we looking for the answers to society’s problems?  Are we looking to the politicians for answers?

The answers are not there.  They have proven that time and again over the years.  They have no answers because for the most part, they do not seek God and his ways.

The people of Israel were the same.  The people had run away from God and would soon find themselves with no hope.  With no one who could give them answers to their problems.

If we are ever going to find answers to societal problems, if we are ever going to find hope for the future, we can only find it in the One who gives hope.  We can find it only by following him and his ways.

Because without God, there is no remedy.  There are no answers.

I love the words of Chuck Colson who said,

Where is the hope?  I meet millions of people who feel demoralized by the decay around us.

The hope that each of us has is not in who governs us, or what laws we pass, or what great things we do as a nation.

Our hope is in the power of God working through the hearts of people.  And that’s where our hope is in this country.  And that’s where our hope is in life.